Why a 17-Minute Delay Ended a 25-Year Aviation Career

An aircraft maintenance engineer with about 25 years in aviation has won an unfair dismissal ruling against Heston MRO after a 17-minute departure delay at Brisbane Airport. Mohammad Israfel K. restarted a Singapore Airlines Airbus A350 on 5 December 2025 to clear recurring fault messages. He said the reset was done with the pilots’ consent to avoid further delays and support a safe flight, but the airline considered it unnecessary and asked Heston MRO to withdraw his authority to work on its aircraft.

Heston MRO dismissed him after the incident. The case went to Australia's Fair Work Commission, where Commissioner Chris Simpson ruled that the termination was unjust because the alleged serious misconduct was not proven on the evidence. The company was ordered to pay gross compensation of AUD 41,203.65, or about €25,188, plus a 12% contribution to Australia's superannuation system.

Reinstatement was refused. The Commission found the employment relationship had been permanently damaged, partly because K. had not disclosed a secondary activity. The ruling also highlighted a damaging inconsistency: Heston MRO's first internal investigation found no breach and treated the event as a no-blame error, but the company later reassessed the same matter and described the engineer as reckless.

How Heston MRO's No-Blame Finding Turned Against It

The no-blame finding Heston MRO had to defend

The employer's real problem was not the delay itself but the contradiction between its first internal review and its later dismissal rationale. Commissioner Simpson criticised the company's handling, and the outcome turned on whether serious misconduct could be demonstrated. It could not.

An airline complaint is not proof of misconduct

Singapore Airlines viewed the restart as unnecessary, but the Commission did not treat the airline's operational criticism as evidence that the engineer had acted recklessly. For maintenance providers, that is a key distinction: a customer's dissatisfaction may justify removing someone from a contract, but it does not by itself make a dismissal fair.

Why compensation did not include reinstatement

Although the dismissal was ruled unjust, K. will not return to the job. The Commission concluded that trust had broken down, including because of the undisclosed secondary activity. In unfair dismissal cases, that can leave compensation as the only practical remedy even when the employee wins the legal argument.

What the Unfair-Dismissal Ruling Means for MRO Employers and Engineers

The case offers a narrow but concrete lesson for aviation maintenance employers and engineers: the evidence available at the time of dismissal determines the outcome, not the severity of a client's complaint.

  • For MRO employers: do not reclassify an internal no-blame finding as misconduct without new documented evidence.
  • For maintenance engineers: record flight-crew approval for a non-standard reset in the technical log or equivalent system where possible.
  • For both: unresolved secondary-employment omissions can still block reinstatement even after an unfair dismissal ruling.